Welcome to the 677th original “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” profile, where today, we’ll be profiling Georgia State Senator Michael E. Williams, who was elected to his first term in office back in 2014. After being the first Republican politician in Georgia to endorse uber-racist presidential candidate Donald Trump during the 2016 elections, in 2018 elections, Williams has opted to not run for a second term in the Georgia State Senate, instead opting to aim much higher early in his career, thinking he has an outside chance at becoming the next Governor of Georgia. There are already several signs as to why that was a mortifying thought for the people of Georgia prior to the GOP Primary for that race.
Williams’ voting record is hardly encouraging, what with votes for “religious freedom” bills to allow discrimination towards LGBTQ citizens, a bill to allow adoption agencies to reject potential adoptees for “religious reasons” like their sexual orientation, his vote for a bill to legalize the concealed carry of firearms on university campuses, and of course, his vote for a bill to make English the official language of the state of Georgia, an idea that the Supreme Court has acknowledged as unconstitutional as far back as 1999.
No, our bigger concern is the four times Michael Williams has turned up on our radar during his campaign for governor. The first time he distinguished himself as being a concern was in June of 2017, when he appeared at an anti-Sharia Law rally being held in the name of paranoid Islamophobia by the anti-Muslim hate group, ACT for America, where he was more than willing to pose with the Georgia Security Force 3% Militia, who just so happen to be a hate group with dual interests, intersecting as not just rabid anti-Islamic nuts who infamously protested a mosque being built in Newton County, and also were not long prior holding a in defense of Confederate monuments. They’re a nice intersection of hate, and Williams was more than happy to pose with them for a photo where they were flashing white supremacist signs. It was only after the Southern Poverty Law Center and the media took note of their friendly little meeting that Williams’ spokesman gave the meager defense that he thought the militant racists were just “pro-gun supporters”.
So Williams went to an Anti-Islam rally and hung out with Neo-Confederates… but it’s not like he’s staunchly defending Confederate monuments himself or anyth- oh, whoops, he has, on live television, such as in August of 2017 when he was outraged at the thought of monuments being defaced, blaming it on Antifa, and falling all over himself in outrage that anyone would want to blast the face off of Stone Mountain Georgia.
As you might expect, a guy who was comfortable chilling out with a militia group packing assault rifles might be, Williams also has quite the hard-on for guns, himself. Enough so that only a few weeks after the mass shooting in Las Vegas, that was carried out by way of using bump stocks to make the guns used fully automatic, that Michael Williams announced that he would be raffling off bump stocks at one of his campaign rallies.
And it was only three months ago that Williams went on CNN to defend his criticisms of Delta Airlines, after it decided to end a discount partnership with the NRA following the mass shooting in Parkland, Florida. Williams began outright lying around this time to say that Delta was still clearly acting on partisan lines because it offered discounts to employees of Planned Parenthood. On air, anchor Brianna Keilar called him out for making an untrue statement, and he doubled down, defending his lie because he and other GOP State Senators in Georgia “looked it up on Google” and then spent a couple days arguing with Keilar on Twitter, claiming that he’d defended his statement.
As of a few days ago, Williams was trying to drum up support by touting his idea to solve our immigration crisis with a “deportation bus” that would catch, per the painted on sign on its windows, “murderers, rapists, kidnappers, child molestors, and other criminals”. Yes, because this bigot also can’t spell. And doesn’t understand that buses are quite large, slow, and would be easy for any suspected illegal immigrants to evade, but “YEEHAW, he’s gonna catch ‘em all like they’re the Pokey-mon.” In a relieving turn of events, Youtube banned Williams from using their website for violating the terms of service because hey, that’s some racist s***.
The only poll we’ve seen in the GOP Primary for Governor of Georgia has Michael Williams polling at about 4%, at best in third place for the nomination. Mercifully, by this time next year, he might be out of elected office.
One Year Ago, May 28th, 2017: Robert Bentley (AL)
Two Year Ago, May 28th, 2016: Mike Pape (KY)
Three Years Ago, May 28th, 2015: Niger Innis (NV)